Posts Tagged ‘Derek Whitmore’

The Amerks travelled to to play a two game set against the Oklahoma City Barons and they came out on top of the first game with a 4-3 win in overtime. The team was up 2-1 before the Barons scored two goals in 56 seconds and then Paul Szczechura scored halfway through the third to tie the game and eventually send it to overtime. Watching the game online they had some struggles but didn’t back down from the top team in the league and came out victorious with an overtime goal scored by Drew Schiestel.

This was the third straight win for the Amerks and just like that they’re within three points of the North Division leading Toronto Marlies. They’re still eighth in the Western Conference but can quickly jump to third by taking over the top spot in the division. Assuming the team keeps playing hard every night, players can stay healthy and there’s few call ups anything is possible.. as everyone says, it’s a long season and it’s still only December.

Back to the game….. Paul Szczechura (aka Chewy.. aka Sahara if you listen to Rick Jeanneret) fresh off a recall to the Buffalo Sabres scored the first goal [...]Read More

The Sabres sent Derek Whitmore back to the Amerks today after his short two game promotion, surprisingly they didn’t harm him in any way while he was called up.. Whitmore didn’t put any points on the scoreboard but his hustle, scoring chances and hard work should earn him another call up this season if the need comes up and it likely will. The Sabres signed Whitmore out of Bowling Green State University and as a college student not drafted many questioned if he’d have what it takes to play in the NHL and he finally got the chance to prove that he could. It only took 272 games in the American Hockey League to get to this point but he was finally able to fulfill his dream of playing in the NHL.

Derek Whitmore is currently the Amerks leading scorer with 13 goals and seven assists in 29 games.

The Amerks are off to Oklahoma City to play two games against the Barons on Tuesday and Wednesday night.

Here we are in late December and the offensive side of the Rochester Americans lineup has just about dried up and as of this morning the team is short on players heading into tonights game against the Lake Erie Monsters. Based on the Amerks roster that played on Sunday minus Whitmore and Foligno they have six defensemen, two goalies and ten forwards. The simple math indicates that leaves them two forwards short. As of Tuesday night there was not any news of additions to the roster.

Don Stevens had mentioned on Sunday that Shaone Morrisonn and Joe Finley were out with injuries from that game. Morrisonn was also handed a one game suspension from the American Hockey League for an elbow this past Friday against the San Antonio Rampage. It’s possible that Morrisonn was just sitting the game out ahead of the pending suspension. We should find out sometime today what the status is of Finley and Morrisonn.

There’s often talk about “man games lost” due to injuries on a team and I can’t imagine another team having a number as high as the Rochester Americans right now. The number combined between injuries and call ups (based on my late [...]Read More

Another day and more players called up to the Buffalo Sabres from the Rochester Americans. The Amerks returned from Texas today and good news awaited Derek Whitmore and Marcus Foligno as both players are on their way to join the Sabres.

Whitmore has played in 272 regular season games between the Portland Pirates and Rochester Americans and will finally get his shot at the show he has worked so hard for. In 29 games this season with the Amerks he has scored 13 goals and tallied seven assists. Whitmore puts everything he has out on the ice night in and night out and will do the same with the Sabres.

Marcus Foligno hopes to make his debut after only 27 games. In the 27 games played with the Amerks he has scored nine goals and tallied three assists. There’s no way that Foligno would have expected to get called up this early in his career but will be thankful for the opportunity. That’s not to say that Foligno wasn’t playing well but with the players above him in depth it just didn’t seem likely.

Assuming Foligno plays he’ll be playing in his first NHL game agains his brother Nick Foligno. [...]Read More

What was shaping up to be a disaster of a road trip was saved on Sunday when six different players scored six goals to lead the Rochester Americans to a 6-2 win over the Houston Aeros. The Amerks lost in overtime on Friday night to the Rampage, were blown out 6-2 on Saturday night against the Stars and then came back for the big win on Sunday. Three out of a possible six points on a long road trip with a lineup missing a lot of key players isn’t too bad of an achievement. (picture featured courtesy of The 3rd Intermission)

Derek Whitmore, TJ Brennan, Alex Biega, Jacob Lagace, Travis Turnbull and Maxime Legault all scored goals on Sunday. Goal scoring has been an issue all season so hopefully the six of those guys lighting up the board will give them all confidence that it can continue to be done.

The Amerks are on a long road trip to Texas and will be looking for a big weekend full of wins to put this last three in three behind them and gain some ground in the standings. They’ll play the Rampage on Friday, Stars on Saturday and Aero’s on Sunday. All three games are must win but the game against the Rampage (the current Florida Panthers affiliate) has some more meaning for obvious reasons. More on that below.

They started out well last weekend with a 3-0 win over the Albany Devils but went on to lose two games by only one goal, one against the Phantoms and the other the Bulldogs. Paying attention to details is something the team talked about after the great win on Friday night but they lost focus of that the next two nights which resulted in two losses. Evan Rankin had two goals against Adirondack which gave them a 2-1 lead before eventually losing in overtime. A four minute high sticking penalty by Drew Schiestel gave the Phantoms the power play in overtime which was the deciding factor. The next night against Hamilton the final score was 2-1 which meant it was a close [...]Read More

A handful of updates on the Rochester Americans on this sunny but cold Saturday afternoon. The Amerks had their first shutout win of the season on Friday night against the Albany Devils winning 3-0. They left last night after the game to head to Glens Falls where they’re playing the Adirondack Phantoms tonight at 7pm.

The biggest bits of news is that Colin Stuart was called up after the game last night due to Jochen Hecht being injured in Friday’s Sabres game. Corey Tropp was also injured and now has a concussion so who knows when he’ll be healthy and sent back to Rochester.

TJ Brennan sent out a tweet saying that he feels well and will be back in the lineup for the Amerks tonight. Ron Rolston had said that he didn’t expect him back this weekend but Brennan participated in full practice on Friday and appeared ready and apparently he is. Have to love the power of Twitter for information being spread!

The Amerks have played two games this weekend and so far they’ve lost to one of the better teams in the conference and now the worst team in the conference. The Bulldogs got their first win in seven games on Saturday against the Amerks, one of the only teams in the league that they can seem to beat. Joonas Nattinen scored an unassisted goal thanks to a Drew Schiestel turnover halfway through the third period to score the game winning goal as the Hamilton Bulldog went on to win the game 3-2.

The Amerks got on the scoreboard first thanks to a great pass from Mark Voakes to Alex Biega from the bottom of one face off circle across ice to the top of the other face off circle where Biega was able to put a shot on Bulldogs goalie Nathan Lawson. The rebound went to the side of the in a spot that Derek Whitmore was occupying and he put in the rebound.

The Bulldogs tied the game 1-1 at 18:46 of the first period courtesy of a turnover by Corey Fienhage. Fienhage had the puck behind the Amerks net and was trying to clear the puck around the [...]Read More

On Saturday night Derek Whitmore scored the first hat trick by an Amerk on home ice since Jamie Johnson during the 2009/10 season and was also the first Rochester American since Jason Pominville in 2005 to score four goals in a game. Pominville went on to score a fifth in that game. The Amerks went on to win the game 5-3 thanks to the outstanding effort by Whitmore to put four goals on the board.

The video highlights recorded off of the scoreboard speak for themselves. Whitmore hustled for the chance to score every goal jumping over a goalie, falling to the ice, hunting for a rebound and out skating defenders. He had scored his first two goals during the first minute and 53 seconds of the game to give the Amerks an early 2-0 lead.

The Bulldogs battled back and tied the game 3-3 (notice the angry door slam by Colin Stuart) but Whitmore eventually scored the game winner and fifth goal for insurance. With all of the recent players called up to the Buffalo Sabres this was a great display by Whitmore who’s still trying to get the chance to play in his first regular season NHL game.

Heading into the game on Friday night there were low expectations due to the fact that the Amerks had lost another forward to a call up, that player being Zack Kassian. That meant the Amerks would be without him, TJ Brennan, Corey Tropp and Drew MacIntyre. The Amerks are still without forwards Travis Turnbull, Michael Ryan and Jonathan Parker who have not returned from injuries. The results of the game though was unexpected with the Amerks winning 4-2 thanks to a solid team effort.

The Amerks had called Riley Boychuck back up from the Gwinnett Gladiators of the ECHL and also signed Evan Rankin to a tryout contract from the Toledo Walleye to help add some extra warm bodies to the bench due to the lack of players.

Shaone Morrisonn, Jacob Lagace, Colin Stuart and Derek Whitmore all scored for the Amerks. Three players out of those four who scored are exactly the players you’d hope to have scoring during times like this when the roster is a shell of what it’s supposed to be.

Morrisonn was in perfect position near the front of the net to put in a rebound. Lagace scored on a breakaway thanks to a great [...]Read More

It’s a Friday and the Rochester Americans are back in action with two big games this weekend against the Toronto Marlies, the only other team in the North Division that appears to be ready to compete with the Amerks for the top spot. The puck drops at 7:35pm but get there at 6:30pm for “Happy Hour” with $2 beers.

It’s still too early in the season to be staring at the standings but it’s better to do it now than trying to squeeze out every point possible in March. The Amerks have a game in hand on the Marlies and are two points ahead of them in the standings.

When it comes to games in the division the Amerks have earned points in seven of their eight divisional games. After losing the first game of the season against the Hamilton Bulldogs they have earned two wins against Grand Rapids and one against Lake Erie. They have lost two games in overtime/shootout against Hamilton and they have one overtime loss in Toronto.

The season started out rocky and the five game losing streak now appears to have been a good thing because the team was able to take something away from [...]Read More

In my 5 Reasons to go to the Amerks game on Friday night I said one of the reasons was the power play (or lack of) and that the 0 for 26 drought was bound to end and that it did on Friday night. After 27 failed power play opportunities the Amerks finally connected not once but twice during the game. The second goal of the game and first of two power play goals was scored by Zack Kassian which was the game winner.

The first period saw Binghamton have control for much of the period not giving the Amerks much room at all to create chances. The box score says that the Amerks had eight shots on goal, only a couple of them were quality.

Andre Petersson put the Senators on the scoreboard first scoring late in the first period on the power play. He received a pass from Mike Hoffman, skated about five feet and snapped a quick wrist shot high glove side past Drew MacIntyre. That would be the only goal of the game though for Binghamton.

Derek Whitmore scored at 3:44 of the second period to tie the game at one. Mark Voakes redirected the [...]Read More